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Sunday, March 16, 2014

Early Suggestions on How Our Parishes Can Observe Divine Mercy Sunday This Year

Early Suggestions on How Our Parishes Can Observe Divine Mercy Sunday This Year | John M. Grondelski | HPR

The feast is intended to highlight divine mercy as God’s greatest attribute, the crowning work” of all his works. As such, it should form a Catholic’s spiritual attitudes and behaviors.

Each year since 2000, the Church Universal has marked the Second Sunday of Easter as “Divine Mercy Sunday.” Blessed John Paul II designated that day as the Feast of Divine Mercy when he canonized Maria Faustina Kowalska (1908-38) in 2000, the first saint canonized in the third millennium.

St. Faustina was a nun who, in the 1930s, received a series of private revelations centered on God’s mercy as his greatest attribute. She recorded those experiences in her Diary. 1 In addition to a theology and spirituality of Divine Mercy, the revelations also contain five concrete forms of devotion requested by the Lord, one of which was the institution of the Feast of Divine Mercy. (The others include a chaplet prayer, similar to the rosary; a daily 3:00 p.m. reflection on Christ’s passion and divine mercy; an image of Jesus as the Divine Mercy; and a request to spread mercy, both in terms of the devotions themselves, as well as through concrete spiritual and corporeal acts of mercy). The devotions themselves also have promises attached to them for those who pray them sincerely.

In the case of the Feast of Divine Mercy, our Lord promises that ” . . . {W}however approaches the Fount of Life on this day will be granted complete remission of sins and punishment” (Diary, # 300). “On this day, the very depths of my tender mercy are open. I pour a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of my mercy. The soul that will go to confession, and receive Holy Communion, shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment . … Let no soul fear to draw near to me, even though its sins be as scarlet” (Diary, # 699).

Because the Feast of Divine Mercy is relatively new to the Church worldwide, some parishes may wonder how best to mark it. Here are some suggestions for how parishes can observe the Feast of Divine Mercy, which next occurs April 27, 2014.